CSotD: Sunday Short Takes
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So Mike Pence has traveled halfway around the world to launch a childish demonstration by failing to stand for the national anthem, and Brian Adcock notes that — however it plays for Dear Leader back home — rude manners don't score well in the international community.
When Dick Nixon was vice-president, he not only showed grown-up manners, but took advantage of his meeting with Khruschev in Moscow to engage in some quick, informal debates that scored a few points.
It was part of a US/USSR initiative to step back a bit from the brink, which at the time was American policy.
But, then, Eisenhower and Nixon were not chickenhawks and so understood the stakes.
Times change.
In any case, one of the apparent strategies of the Republican leadership is to keep Pence as far from the White House as possible, in order to keep him clean in case he's suddenly called up for promotion.
A far different plan than devised for Spiro Agnew, who was Nixon's hatchetman, in charge of making the kinds of divisive, idiotic remarks that Dear Leader tweets for himself. The result was a hyena vice-president so ridiculed and hated that it was necessary to disappear him before the president got the hook.
However, Pence does not appear to be going along with this "stand waaaay over there and don't do anything stupid" plan.
At the moment, we're in a situation where the worldwide media is perhaps burnishing too brightly the representative of a repressive regime.
Kim Yo Jong is cute and well-dressed and gracious, but she's not the first member of a tyrannical royal family to afford nice clothes while her people cannot afford food.
Which might not be hard to turn around if you don't have an ill-bred fool representing your own government, who comes to his seat and greets everyone else but pointedly snubs the person whom he might best serve us all by melting a bit of ice with.
And then the same nimcompoop who, a few months ago, made a special, taxpayer-funded trip to an Indianapolis Colts game so that he could get up and dramatically flounce out in a snit because a few players took a knee during the anthem, proceeds to embarrass our country by doing just what they did, but with less purpose and on a larger stage.
Get that son of a bitch out of the sky boxes right now, out. He’s fired. He’s fired!
Juxtaposition of the Day
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(While Pence is alienating the rest of the world, the GOP has made inroads in undercutting it own support here, as Rob Rogers notes.
The budget deal certainly does not heel to standard GOP doctrine, but, then again, it does seem that you can alienate the commentators without alienating the base.
Rogers pokes fun at the disconnect between doctrine and actions, and there are conservative cartoonists who are genuinely furious over what they see as a grievous betrayal.
However, as Bell notes, the Deplorables are cheerfully accepting semi-truths and nonsense and won't see the facts that explain those flamboyant, empty gestures, because it's being covered over in the fake news that nobody reads.
So you can announce factory moves that were planned before Trump came into power and bonuses that are only being handed out to a very limited, deeply vested, small group of key employees and they'll gobble it down as gospel.
They're also seeing more money in their pay envelopes, and that pleases them.
I hope I'm not being too condescending in suspecting that the True Believers won't see that extra money as evidence of "kicking the can down the road" or "increasing the deficit," much less as burdening their children with an economy headed for collapse. But, after all, the True Believers also think Rent-to-Own is a good deal and are cheerfully selling off any structured settlements that come their way.
However, they may find a nasty surprise next April, since the IRS has hinted that, given that they're still crossing t's and dotting i's and figuring out the new tax system, there's a decent chance Joe Six-Pack is going to have to dig into his savings because he won't have had enough withholding to cover his taxes.
Of course I'm joking. Joe doesn't have any savings.
Fortunately, the Trump gov't is keeping the Pay Day Loan industry free from nasty regulations, so Joe can get the money there.
Lucky Joe!
And Lucky Don that none of this shit will hit the fan until after the mid-term elections.
Okay, that's not luck: That's planning.
Meanwhile, back in the Dark Ages
Queen Aleta of the Misty Isles is at the center of a new Prince Valiant adventure in which she apparently will have to deal with the sort of unspeakable barbarians who falsely blame immigrants for violent crime.
Little drops of water, and bear in mind that part of turning the nation around in the McCarthy days included pop culture that attacked the haters, the merchants of paranoia and the would-be tyrants.
Again, it's hard to say how many True Believers will see a newspaper and thus read this strip, but, then again, there's virtue in keeping morale up on your own side of the divide.
Besides, as said here before, the True Believers are an implacable minority. It's the hangers-on who need to be persuaded, and can be.
Speaking of Wise Women
In the Sunday Vintage Big Ben Bolts from 1957, Ben's wise Aunt Martha has unmasked a fraudulent nephew with grace and aplomb, reminding me of when the comics were full of wise, dignified old women, like Melissa in Rex Morgan and Mary Worth, who is a great deal more youthful today than she was a generation ago, and Peter Parker's Aunt Mae, who is now played by an actress who is both too young and too hot for me to dream of going out with.
I remember, though, when it was okay to be old.
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